It’s been confirmed: President Bush is above the law, both of the United States and of human decency. Memos from last year confirm that elements within the White House sought, and were “given”, the Justice Department’s imprimatur to engage in torture and other human rights abuses as long as they were acting directly with Bush’s authority. So that’s all right then. Hail to the Divine King.
A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation’s security.
“In order to respect the President’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign . . . [the prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority.”
To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a “presidential directive or other writing” that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is “inherent in the president.”
It’s perhaps worth noting what an earlier absolutist leader (the notorious gay monarch King James 1 of England and Ireland) had to say on the subject of strong rule:
They make and unmake their subjects, they have power of raising and casting down, of life and of death, judges over all their subjects and in all causes and yet accountable to none but God only. I conclude then this point touching the power of kings with this axiom of divinity, That as to dispute what God may do is blasphemy, so is it sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power.
Earlier here.
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